


Something So Beautiful

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cause he's a fish-man, Dumb Sherlock, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Merlock, Not London, Poole - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 08:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2500532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When something John can only describe as an injured merman washes up in Poole Harbour, John, as a doctor, takes it upon himself to nurse him back to health. That the merman wants nothing resembling 'nursing' is immaterial, as he remains in the harbour at the jurisdiction of none but himself.</p>
<p>'John blinked furiously, trying to clear the salt from his eyes so he could see the three massive gashes on either side of the man’s ribcage. Only, gashes usually bled. A lot. Especially when they were that big. And they were so clean, almost surgical. John had seen many horrible things during his time in the war, but he was still horrified by the thought that someone could calmly and precisely do this to another human. Then it seemed to sink in; they’re not bleeding. The man would have bled out within minutes of the cuts being made. John was holding a dead man.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Body in the Harbour

**Author's Note:**

> Merlock. Need I say more? <3

John hissed in pain through clenched teeth as he heaved himself out of the water and onto the rough but pleasantly warm rock, his feet still hanging over the edge, the cool water lapping around his calves. He let himself lie back on the sharp, pitted surface of the weather-worn stone, his right hand pressed to his left shoulder, as though hoping to ease some of the pain there. The physiologists said he’d regain full movement if he exercised regularly, but whenever he tried he had to stop from the screaming pain, feeling as though he was being shot all over again.

And so, John lay on a weathered rock halfway out into Poole Harbour, in extreme pain and wondering if he’d be able to make the swim back to Sandbanks, seeing as bloody Brownsea Island wasn’t exactly open to random swimmers. He slowly regained his breath and wondered why he’d stopped thinking about his actions when he got back from Afghanistan. It was a stupid idea, swimming out here, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret it, instead thinking of Harry and how much he just needed to get out of the goddamned house.

She lived in Poole, now. She’d been in Sussex when he’d last visited her, but he was grateful for the change of location. He was not, however, grateful for the change in her marital status. Because despite her insistences that she was  _fine_ and she  _wanted her to go_ and  _it was my bloody idea, John,_ she’d turned back to drinking, using it as a crutch to support her weary heart, because though she’d pushed for the divorce, it was only because she could see Clara’s disappointment and knew it would come, anyway. But Poole was nice.

Poole had a bay, which was good. John swam a lot, since returning. It was difficult to for people to ask how you were doing when you were swimming. It was also difficult to limp while you were swimming, so it made him feel as though he wasn’t the useless husk of a man he knew he was. He realised his hand was trembling and clenched it, trying to force it to stop. It didn’t.

He sat up when he felt well enough to, beginning to question his previous certainty that he’d needed to get away. Such a ‘need’ had landed him a sure-to-be painful trip back to the mainland. But then he remembered Harry stumbling through the door and falling onto the couch to cry half-muffled sobs into leather which probably still smelled like her long-gone wife. It was only two o’clock. Yes. He’d had to get away.

He felt a twinge in his leg and rubbed it absently, looking back across the channel to Sandbanks. He didn’t much want to go back. He slapped a mosquito and flicked its tiny black body from his upper arm and knew he had to. Harry would likely be passed out by the time he got back. He would be able to sneak past her, on the sofa, and into his room. He’d clean his gun. He’d go to bed. Hopefully, he’d sleep, but he knew just how likely that was.

He sighed as he admired the way the sunlight shone through the water, illuminating it a few metres before being lost in the blue-green depths. His shoulder twinged as he let his right hand drop onto his lap and he knew he wouldn’t be able to make the trip for another ten minutes, at least. It had been a while since he’d strained his injury like that.

But as he looked out at the water, something caught his eye, perhaps five hundred metres out. It looked like… a piece of driftwood? It was bobbing on the waves like it might be, but John didn’t think he’d ever seen a piece of driftwood like that… Was it seaweed? He squinted at the object, trying to determine what it was for a moment before his heart seized, stopping for a moment before rushing off at what was likely an unhealthy speed.

Not pausing to think about his shoulder or his leg, John stood up on the rock before diving into the water, swimming towards the flotsam, ignoring the screaming pain of his shoulder as he cut a hurried, broken freestyle. Because it wasn’t driftwood, or seaweed. It was a  _person._

Finally, after excruciating minutes, John had managed to struggle through the water to the person’s side. By the time he got there, he could barely move his arm and he was short of breath, spluttering when a gentle wave passed over his head. Quickly, not pausing to get a good look at them – he didn’t even determine if they were a man or woman – he pulled their arm over his shoulders, holding it in place with his left hand as his right arm wound around their waist and he manoeuvred them until their face was out of the water.

They weren’t breathing, but he couldn’t very well perform CPR in the water, so he began dragging their two bodies back to the island, the quicker option. The added weight dragged him down, so the small waves were passing over their heads as often as not. One of his arms could hardly move and the other was holding the person, forcing him to use a form of survival breaststroke, the person – who he identified as a man, through his lack of breasts – supported half on John’s chest as he kicked through the water on his back, holding the man under his arms and across his chest.

His skin felt strange, almost slippery under John’s arms, but he passed it off as the water, disturbing his hold on him. It felt an age and a half before John finally looked over his shoulder and saw the rock and he prayed to whatever gods there were that he wasn’t too late. Leaving the man for a moment, he heaved himself onto the rock once more before reaching down to haul him out of the water. When he managed to haul his torso out, he almost dropped him back in horror.

John blinked furiously, trying to clear the salt from his eyes so he could see the three massive gashes on either side of the man’s ribcage. Only, gashes usually bled. A lot. Especially when they were  _that_ big. And they were so  _clean,_ almost surgical. John had seen many horrible things during his time in the war, but he was still horrified by the thought that someone could calmly and precisely do this to another human. Then he realised;  _they’re not bleeding._ The man would have bled out within minutes of the cuts being made. John was holding a dead man.

Jaw clenching and mouth pressing into a thin line, he ignored the apparent status of the man’s life and continued to haul him out of the water, eyes squeezing tight to counteract the pain of his shoulder and the threat of his leg to collapse. It wasn’t long before he was up on the rock, and then John had another fright altogether. ‘ _Impossible…’_ he thought. Because this only happened in fantasy novels and maybe gene-splicing sci-fi. This didn’t happen in real life. And John was about seventy-six per cent sure this was real life. So where the  _hell_ were this guy’s legs, and  _who in god’s name_ had replaced them with a fucking  _fish tail?_

John rocked back on his heels, taking in the whole picture. In all the war wounds he’d treated as a medic, he’d never seen cuts  _quiver_ like that. It was horrifying, disturbing. Almost like… well, like a landed fish, trying to pull water into its gills.

‘ _Holy fuck,’_ he thought, horrible realisation dawning on him. ‘ _Gills. That’ll explain why he’s not breathing.’_ John froze, locked between,  _‘This is a dream. This has **got** to be a very realistic, very lucid dream,’ _and,  _‘You’re a doctor aren’t you, Watson? What the **hell** are you waiting for?’ _because despite the fact that he apparently didn’t need gaseous oxygen, he was still unconscious and he’d still been floating in the middle of the bay. Finally, he snapped himself out of it, his training kicking in as he reached forward to take his pulse, knowing he was alive by the way his… _gills_ trembled.

There was a pulse, but it was too fast. By human standards, anyway. John had never felt the need to learn the average heart rate of any kind of fish, so he had a hard time comparing it to anything. But he assumed the heart was in the human part of the body, and so would have a rhythm fairly similar to that of a human’s. And for a human’s, it was too fast. John took a deep breath and held it for two seconds before blowing it out, puffing out his cheeks as he did so. Finally, he allowed himself to look at… at the  _tail._ It was honestly nothing like the tail of any kind of fish John had seen. It was long and sleek, well-muscled and-  _bleeding._

He cut himself off from analysing the tail, instead focusing on the slowly-bleeding cuts. There were three patches at random intervals where scales had apparently been ripped out, leaving the raw skin below. He gently rolled the man – merman? – into what passed for a recovery position, considering the tail and all, and peered at the other side, ignoring for the moment the spiny dorsal fin running halfway up his back. There were two more patches of missing scales on that side, one behind a well-developed pelvic fin and another just above where the scales ended and the caudal fin began.

Despite the injuries, John determined quickly that none were particularly severe and wouldn’t have caused the unconscious state and the only reason they were still bleeding was that they were remarkably recent, because one thing he did know was that fish blood coagulated at a remarkable pace. Even as he had been looking over the fish-man, the bleeding had slowed to a gentle trickle which would soon stop altogether.

But another thing which had been slowing was the way the gillswere moving, weakly begging for water to breathe. Not knowing what he could do, he positioned the man at the edge of the rock, slipped into the water and pulled him down too, gracelessly falling into the water with a loud splash. With his weak arm, John held him around the chest again, his head lolling onto John’s pain-filled shoulder, while his other arm was hoisted over the rock, holding them up. It took a moment, but John finally saw his gills’ movements become steadier. He wondered if he ought to be moving, to let water flow over them more easily, but he could hardly hold them up, let alone go swimming around the bay.

With his arms occupied, there was little he could do but wait for the man to regain consciousness, though it was apparent he was going to, if breathing was anything to go by. Looking at his face, John saw a bruise and lump on his right temple and came to the conclusion he’d been knocked out, but whether or not he had a concussion was unclear. He tried to release his hold on the rock to pull back an eyelid and check dilation, but as soon as he did, they began to sink, so he scrambled to retrieve his hold, skinning his knuckles on the rough stone as he did.

As he hung there, waiting for the fish-man to wake up, John became increasingly aware of the fact that his spiny dorsal fin was, though laid flat against his spine, resting largely against John’s torso, who had heard altogether too many stories of people standing on stone or lionfish and dying quickly thereafter, from the poison contained in their spines. And so, John tried to shift the body resting against him so he wasn’t in danger of being impaled and poisoned. Or just impaled. It was a good thing, too, as the man seemed to be stirring, his tail giving short flicks as eyes moved a little under the eyelids, the spines John had been worrying about giving half-hearted twitches as he struggled to regain consciousness.

Holding his breath and watching his face carefully, John prepared himself for his awakening. It was a few minutes in coming, as he stopped his movements for a while, seemingly giving in to the incessant drag of unconsciousness before struggling to rise above it again and finally, _finally,_ his eyes flickered open tiredly and his lolling head rolled up to support itself.

He looked out at the bay first, gazing at the water traffic rather than realise John was holding them up, struggling to keep them afloat. When he  _did_ realise, however, he gave a spectacular yelp and the spines on his back stood straight up, his arms flailing as he made uncoordinated attempts to free himself. In his struggle, he managed to land a blow on John’s injured shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain and let his arm drop into the water, hunching over reflexively. The man shot below the water faster than John had ever seen, but didn’t go far. With a sharp flick of his tail, he turned and began swimming right back at John, his face indescribably angry.

Before John even had a chance to react, the man had rammed his outstretched hands into John’s ribcage, forcing all the air out of his lungs, and was holding him above the water like you might hold a baby in the air. John gasped for a breath with his winded and kicked wildly, struggling to get out of his hold. At the sight of his legs, the dark-haired fish-man jerked back, letting John drop back into the water as he looked at him with wide eyes.

“What the  _bloody hell-”_  John spluttered, clawing for his hold on the rock, his left arm paralysed from the shock of the blow.

The thing was taken aback for only a moment, determination steeling his gaze as he surged forward once more and grasped John by the shoulders, pushing him below the water. “Where is my brother?” he yelled, and the sound travelled as clearly through the water as it would through air. John struggled, but his hold was firm. His hand tightened on John’s left shoulder, recognising it as a weak spot, and John screamed, releasing a flood of bubbles and distorted sound. With a growl of frustration, the man hauled him up to the surface and slammed his back against the side of the rock, pinning him there with a forearm across his throat and a face lost in anger. “Where is my  _brother?”_ he repeated with more force.

“I don’t know!” John gasped, fighting for breath. “There was only you out in the bay! I thought you were drowning!”

His anger crumpled into confusion, but he didn’t let his hold slip. “Drowning?” he asked, as though testing the word.

“Yes,  _drowning!_ You know, when you breathe in water and die?” John asked, his tone sarcastic and his face a little frantic.

The man’s frown only deepened. “I breathed in water. Which means I must be drowning. Which makes your analysis correct.”

“You can’t drown if you have gills! Now let me  _go!”_

His hold tightened for a moment as suspicion returned to his face and he asked, “You didn’t see anyone else? It was just me?” When John nodded frantically, he let him go, drifting back a little. “Good,” he spat, eyes narrowing in anger not directed at John. “That no-good, lying piece of urchin  _shit,”_ he muttered, running thinly-webbed fingers though his soaked, dark hair. “You saw what he did to my tail, did you not?”

“Yes,” John said slowly, hesitant to ask, but doing it anyway. “What  _did_ he do, thought?”

“He ripped the oysters off, the bastard. I was class five, then he decided to disinherit me.” He snorted through his nose, leading John to believe he had lungs as well as gills, and muttered, “Why he waited this long, I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

“Why would he disinherit you?” John asked carefully, wary of the man before him, who snorted again and rolled his eyes.

“Because I’m an ‘impulsive and wilful child with no respect for anyone with authority over me’, apparently. He’s been saying that one for years.” His eyes narrowed again as he looked at John, calculating. “You’re a human, aren’t you?” he asked, tone suspicious.

John nodded briskly and countered, “And you’re a… merman.”

The creature burst out in laughter before asking, “Is that what you call us? ‘Mermen’. Water men. Or pure men, if you take the prefix of ‘mere’ down a different road of its etymology.” He chuckled again and scoffed, “ _Pure._ Well, if that’s what you want to believe…”

John knew that he should have been irritated, but couldn’t help the small chuckle that escaped him, because whatever else he might be, the man before him was certainly not  _pure,_ and John could see that easily. “Alright, what do you call yourselves, then?”

 _“Dipnoi Sapiens, **(lung fish + humans)”**  _he said with a small smirk.

“That’s not a name,” John insisted. “That’s a scientific classification.”

The man shrugged as though not fussed at the details. “I don’t see anyone complaining except you, and it’s not as though you have a say. We’re not even from the same class.”

“Alright, get off your high horse-”

“Sea horse?” he asked, tilting his head to the side in a confused manner.

“No,  _normal_ horse. Like… I don’t know. Big. With four legs. It’s a saying, to get off your high horse. Stop being such a self-satisfied ponce,” John tried to explain.

“Are you calling me a self-satisfied ponce now?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, grinning a little in amusement.

“No- well, yes, but only because you were being one. I haven’t the slightest idea of if you actually are one,” John tried to backpedal, but ended up just shrugging.

“Well, you’d be right. I most certainly am a self-satisfied ponce, as you put it. Quite proud of it, too.”

“Is that why you decided to attack the person who was trying to help you?” John asked with a frown.

“Oh,  _please,”_ he scoffed. “You don’t know the slightest thing about gills, do you? First, you dragged me out of the water, which made them all stick together, then you dumped me back in the water, which would have been good, if you’d been swimming around. Instead, the only thing that saved me from oxygen starvation was the waves. So ‘helping’ is a bit of a strong word to use in this context, don’t you think?”

John shrugged and said, “I did say ‘trying’,” with a grin.

“Yes, trying and failing.”

“Hey, you’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Barely,” he said dryly.

“What’s your name, anyway?” John asked. The water was beginning to feel cold from his lack of movement in it, so he heaved himself back up, onto the rock.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said, swimming closer carefully while looking at John’s legs with almost childlike curiosity.

“John Watson,” John said, offering his own. He kicked some water at Sherlock with a grin, grateful that the cool water had helped numb his shoulder, if nothing else.

“That’s a boring name,” he said as he shook the water out of his face, shooting him an annoyed glare.

“Well, it’s not yours, so I don’t see why it bothers you. I happen to quite like my name, thank you very much.”

“It doesn’t suit you,” Sherlock insisted, reaching out a hand to catch John’s ankle as he went to kick more water at him. “It’s  _ordinary.”_

“Am I meant to have a problem with that? I  _like_  being ordinary.”

“Too bad,” Sherlock said as he began examining John’s foot with his cool, webbed hands. “You’re anything but.”

“Says the one with the tail,” John muttered, looking at the dark scales flashing under the water. They were almost black at the tail fin, but lightened to what John identified as a Byzantium shade of purple as they climbed up to meed his human torso. The line between where human ended and fish began was both blurred and distinct. Blurred because of the way the scales crept up his abdomen and the way the spiny dorsal fin reached halfway up his back, the webbing of his fingers and the way his ears swept back to be almost fin-like, though still identifiably ears and so he didn’t really know where the definitive line was. Distinct, because while the line may have been blurred, half of him was definitely a fish and half of him was… slightly more human than that.

“What do you actually  _use_ these for?” Sherlock was asking as he moved each of John’s toes back and forth, marvelling at their mobility but confused as to their purpose.

“Toes. They’re pretty useful, I guess. For balance and running and picking dishtowels off the kitchen floor.”

“Two thirds of that I did not understand and would like for you to explain.”

John sighed and lay back, propping himself up with an elbow and tried to explain. “Running is… it’s like walking, which is how we move around. We, you know, stand up on our feet and… walk, I guess. Running’s like that, but faster.”

“And the dishtowels off the kitchen floor?” Sherlock prompted, taking a moment to appreciate John’s ankle, flexing it this way and that.

“Well, things aren’t really wet, up here. And I guess we don’t like it much when things get wet. So we have towels, which are bits of cloth that we use to-  _Ouch!_ That doesn’t bend that way!” he exclaimed, pulling his foot from Sherlock’s hands, rubbing his ankle as he glared at him. “Don’t force it to go in a direction it doesn’t take to,” he reprimanded with a scowl as he dipped his foot back into the water.

Sherlock didn’t look particularly put out, simply choosing to watch John’s reaction carefully and John wondered if he hadn’t done it on purpose, to see what would happen. “Continue,” was all he said as he went back to looking over John’s feet, taking obvious care to be gentle.

John rolled his eyes and went back to explaining dishtowels, which led to explaining dishes, which led to kitchens, which led to houses. Whenever he said something Sherlock didn’t understand, the man would ask him to explain and it didn’t seem like long before John was fully dry, lying back on the rock while Sherlock sat on the edge, breathing with his lungs as he looked around at the dry rocks and the water traffic and the islands, most times simply listening but occasionally jumping in to ask a question about something in particular.

After he finished explaining the necessity of a front door (“We’re  _humans,_ Sherlock, not bloody birds. We can’t just jump out the window of a two storey building and fly off into the sunset.”), John looked around and noticed how much time had passed. “I should start heading back,” he said with a sigh.

“Why?” Sherlock asked simply. “It’s not as though you’re going back to anything.”

“Well, I can’t exactly stay on this rock forever. I have to eat sometime,” John reminded him with a chuckle.

“Ugh, eating. Eating’s boring,” Sherlock said with a huff.

“Are you a model example of mer-people, or are you as weird to them as you are to me?” he asked with a good-natured grin.

“I’ll remind you that my brother disowned me and leave you to your deductions,” he said with a slight smirk.

“Good,” John said with a decisive nod, hauling himself into a sitting position.

“And why is that?” Sherlock asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Because if there were any more of you, your society would have collapsed into a mass of egotistical bastards each claiming to be better than everyone else. As it is, it seems to work quite nicely.”

“Are you kidding? He  _disowned_ me!” Sherlock exclaimed, the spines of his dorsal fin rising slightly in indignation.

“From what I hear, you deserved it,” John said, laughing at his irritation.

“Oh dear lord, you aren’t meant to  _side_ with him! He’s a menace!”

“He owns the government, in your words. I don’t think anyone has any  _choice_ but to side with him,” John pointed out.

“Of course they do.  _I_ did.”

“And you’re a great example of fair and courteous treatment. You’re his brother, and he kicked you out of the tribe or whatever it is you call it. How many others do you think are going to follow, after that?”

“Pah, I don’t want them following me. I prefer to be alone,” Sherlock snorted.

“Then what are you complaining about?” John asked with a laugh, shoving his friend playfully. “Seems to me like you get the best of the deal. You just hate being wrong. I think that’s what your problem is.”

“It’s not a problem, John,” Sherlock insisted, miffed. “ _Everyone_ hates being wrong. Even you.”

“Yeah, but the difference is, I know when and how to admit it. You haven’t the slightest clue.”

“I’m not having this conversation anymore. You’re being ridiculous,” Sherlock muttered as he turned his head away. His hair, now that it was dry, had sprung up into salty black curls, though John could see a dull tint of red in the late afternoon sun.

John chuckled and stood, mindful of his leg and said, “Well, that’s alright, because I’ve got to go back now anyway.”

“Do what you want,” he muttered, not looking at him.

John shook his head with a grin and ruffled Sherlock’s  hair before diving back into the cold water to begin the swim back home. His shoulder was weak from the strain it had been put under throughout the day, so going was slower than usual, but he was more confident in his ability to return than he had been earlier.

After making his way for a few minutes, Sherlock’s head popped out of the water a few metres in front of him and he said, “Hurry up, John. You swim about as fast as a Jellyfish. Your brain’s about as big as one, too.”

“Jellyfish don’t  _have_  brains,” he replied as he continued on, “so your statement is redundant.”

“No, my statement implies I don’t think you have a brain, therefore making  _you_ redundant.”

“I’m not sure if you’re calling me a jellyfish, or if you’re calling jellyfish redundant, so I’m just going to say ‘yes’.”

“It wasn’t a statement which desired a yes or no answer. Though I thank you for your trust in me.”

They swam in silence for a while – or rather, John swam and Sherlock darted here and there, ducking below the water to have a look at something on the bottom, or approaching a small motor boat with a couple of fishermen before darting away, letting them see only a flash of his scales to taunt them, every now and then coming back to see how much progress John had made.

“John, I understand you’re crippled, but can’t you move along a  _little_ faster?” Sherlock all but whined the last time.

“What’s the rush?” John asked, spitting salt water out of his mouth as a wave passed over half his face. When Sherlock rolled his eyes, he said, “I’ve got a question for you, while you’re here. Are your spines poisonous? Because I’ve heard of stonefish and-“

“Did you just,” Sherlock began darkly, glaring at John, “compare me to a stonefish?”

“Well… when you put it like that, I can understand why you’d be offended. Would you prefer a lionfish?”

“A lionfish?  _Really?_ Is that what you think of me, John?”

“Well, you’re flashy enough, and they’re poisonous,” John reasoned with a grin.

“They have tentacle-fins!” Sherlock exclaimed, throwing his hands up in a great show of drama. “If a _nything_ is redundant, it’s tentacle-fins.”

“But I wasn’t asking if you had tentacle-fins, was I? If you want to be all enigmatic about it, that’s fine, but I was just wondering.”

“Of course they’re poisonous. You think I’m this colour for show?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock huffed angrily and swiped some water at John with his tail when he laughed.

“Alright, so are all of you purple, then?” John asked as he wiped the water from his eyes.

Sherlock shook his head and said, “The females tend to be brown or silver and don’t have venom, but the men range in colour from indigo to red, depending on the potency of their poison. I won’t kill you, but I’ll leave you writhing in pain for a day and unable to move for a week after that. The system assists with choosing a mate.”

“And you have a mate?” John asked, wondering if his brother had separated him from his partner when he’d taken his oysters, or whatever it was. Sherlock shot him a look and he said, “Right, yeah, sorry. Bit of a personal question. Don’t worry about it.”

Sherlock was silent for a moment before he said, “No, I don’t have a partner. I never wanted one.  _Reproduction_ ,” he sneered, “is not something that holds any interest for me. As I’m sure you’ve discovered, my manner doesn’t exactly encourage the approach of potential partners.”

“Well, how am I to know if you act like an arrogant tosser around the ladies?” John asked, imagining Sherlock trying to pull and finding it a very amusing image, indeed.

“Tosser?” Sherlock asked with a frown, looking at John.

“Um… wanker. Not sure if you know that one…” John sighed at Sherlock’s continued look of confusion and wondered if it was worth explaining masturbation to him. Taking into consideration the conversation which had just been had, he decided against it. “Never mind. It’s just an insult, saying you can’t get a woman.”

“It’s not that I’m not  _able_ to, it’s that I don’t  _want_ to.”

“I know, you just said… Oh. Is that… Are you…” John shook his head and said, “No, it’s none of my business. It’s fine.”

Sherlock stopped for a moment at John swam past, confused. It was a moment before realisation came to him and he hurried after John, catching up in a second. “John, I don’t want to ‘get’ anyone. At all.”

“Alright,” John said, continuing swimming.

Sherlock hesitated before asking, “Is that a problem?”

“Why would that be a problem?” John asked with a laugh. “I just told you, it’s fine. It’s  _all_ fine.”

Sherlock seemed to relax and ducked back under the water, the gills over his ribs ruffling as they passed through oxygen-rich water to the sandy bottom. When he came back, John had only a quarter of the way to go and the sun had just touched the horizon. Despite how easily he was going on it, John’s shoulder was aching and becoming more and more difficult to use, his breath heavier.

“If you really want, I could take you the rest of the way,” Sherlock offered, seeing John’s struggle.

“You told me… your spines could leave me immobile… for a week… No thanks,” John huffed out between waves breaking over his face and heavy breaths.

Sherlock was silent for almost a minute before groaning and pulling John’s injured arm over his shoulders. “This is painful to watch,” he muttered as he got John in the hold the doctor had used to pull him to Brownsea Island. “Hold your breath,” he instructed, “close your eyes if you want, tap my shoulder three times if you’re about to pass out. Ready?”

John took a few deep breaths before holding one and nodding at Sherlock. Immediately, his friend pulled him below the surface and shot off, towards the mainland, pulling John with him, tail flicking strong and sure as he almost halved the distance before John frantically tapped his shoulder. They broke the surface within a second and John gasped for air, looking around to get his bearings. Seeing how far they’d come in under a minute, he panted out, “Holy shit,” and ruffled Sherlock’s hair again.

Sherlock snorted and shook his head like a dog, flicking John with drops of water. “Are you ready?” he asked again as he fixed his hold on John, who took another deep breath and nodded. This time, he managed to hold it longer, but Sherlock, while able to cut the remaining distance in half again, was slowed down by the extra weight and lack of a streamlined shape.

“I think I’ll be able to make the rest myself,” John said, sensing Sherlock’s strain and trying to pull his arm from his shoulders.

“Don’t be stupid. Once more. The muscles in your shoulder have been abused enough for one day, you’ll barely be able to move it in the morning. No need to make it worse than it is.”

“If you’re sure…” John muttered before taking a deep breath. Again, Sherlock pulled them under. This time, John managed to keep his eyes open, though they stung in the salt water and he couldn’t see a lot of anything. He turned his head to look at Sherlock and could distinguish the determined set of his mouth and the way his hair was pulled back from his head from their motion. He could feel the gills on Sherlock’s right side pressed against John’s left and wondered how much the limited oxygen flow affected him. But he was slowly letting bubbles trail from his lips, so he must have taken an extra breath before he went under, to compensate.

John’s lungs were just beginning to burn for air when Sherlock slowed his pace. John saw a barnacle-encrusted pylon and knew they were at the jetty where he’d started. Rather than dropping him at the end on the wooden jetty after they broke the surface, Sherlock pulled him to a place where he could touch the sandy bottom.

“Are you breathing alright?” Jon asked, concerned, as he stood in the chest-deep water. “I know I was on your gills.”

“I’m fine, John,” Sherlock said, waving him off. “It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”

John nodded, believing him. “What are you going to do now?” he asked, not particularly wanting to leave. Only Harry was waiting for him at home.

“I suppose I’ll go look for something to eat, then find somewhere to sleep.”

“Alright, two more questions before I go,” John said with a grin.

“I don’t grant wishes and you won’t encounter unreasonably good luck, no,” he said, frowning.

“Not quite what I had in mind, but cheers anyway. First of all, what  _do_ you eat?”

Sherlock shrugged, looking bored, but John could tell he wasn’t actually irritated by the question, “Fish, mostly. Sometimes seaweed, sometimes algae. Oysters, crustaceans, anything, really. It’s so tedious, having choices. This way, I have to find out what it is I  _want_ to eat. If it were only one thing, I’d have no problem.”

“First world problems,” John sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes before continuing. “The other thing was, why weren’t you breathing out of the water while you were unconscious, but you could, later on?”

“An excellent question. Well done, John. While we are equipped with lungs, they are a secondary function and it’s not unusual for us to never use them in our lives. So, it’s not instinctive. The whole time I was out of the water and breathing, I was concentrating on doing so. It’s quite a daunting task to begin and difficult to maintain for the first few minutes, but it really is a matter of practice. I would liken it to me telling you to stick your head under the water and breathe. You wouldn’t do it, because you know there is little chance of you getting anything more than a pair of lungs filled with water.”

“I might, you never know. Depends how you ask, really,” John said with a grin. “One more thing before I go.”

“I just gave you two more things and now you want another one?” Sherlock sighed in exasperation.

“No, those were questions. This is a thing. It’s different.”

“What, pray tell, is the difference?” he asked, rolling his eyes.

“The difference is, I’ll be coming down to this jetty tomorrow morning, around six, and wouldn’t be all too put out if you were here, too.”

“What makes you think I’ll be coming over here at six in the morning? I have injuries to tend,” Sherlock muttered, his spines lifting a little before settling back.

“I’ll bring coffee,” John said with a small smirk. “And tea.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed and he asked suspiciously, “What’s coffee and tea?”

John shrugged and turned away, beginning to wade back up to the beach. “Just some things.” After a moment, he heard a frustrated growl and a splash, and when he turned back, Sherlock was nowhere in sight. He grinned as he walked home, knowing Sherlock wouldn’t be able to help himself.

At home, he took the half-empty bottle of Jack from Harry’s limp hand and pulled the Afghan over her, then turned off the light. He went upstairs to his room and was halfway through disassembling his gun for cleaning when he realised he’d left his cane down by the jetty. He thought about going to get it, but shrugged it off. It was getting late, the sun was down and he’d be going there first thing in the morning. He’d get it then.


	2. Taste of Tea, Promise of Toast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re early,” came a low baritone by his feet.
> 
> John looked down and saw Sherlock’s head poking out of the water, his black hair plastered to his face. “So are you,” he said with a small smile. He hadn’t heard him approach.
> 
> '“Did you bring the coffee and tea?” he asked as he swam closer, almost-black scales flashing under the water.
> 
> John nodded and gestured with the thermos in his hand. “Do you want to come up here, or are you fine down there?” he asked.
> 
> “I’ll come up.” John placed the tea and his makeshift mug to the side and reached out his right arm. Sherlock grabbed it and clumsily hoisted himself out of the water and onto the jetty, tail making a bit of a commotion as he flicked it about, trying to get some leverage. Finally, he was lying on the jetty on his stomach, so it was a simple matter to roll over and sit up.
> 
> Once he was sitting next to John, his tail fin trailing in the water, he looked at him. “Tea and coffee?” he prompted.'

Five o’clock came slowly. John was laying on his side, watching the dots on his digital clock blink at him mockingly for four hours, waiting for his alarm to go off. It was no longer a call to wake him up, so much as a reminder that if he didn’t get ready for the day soon, he wouldn’t be ready for it when it came. Somehow, his meeting with Sherlock had convinced him he wouldn’t dream. As the dots on his digital clock read 4:58am, he wondered if  _he_ had been a dream. Because yesterday hadn’t been so terrible. He’d laughed. He’d joked. He’d forgotten, for a second. John regretted leaving his cane down by the jetty. The walk would be painful without it.

4:59am. The dots blinked at him. Coffee and tea. He’d put them in a couple of thermoses, take them down to the jetty. He wondered if Sherlock would turn up. He wondered if Sherlock existed. Maybe he was finally going mad. Though, what caused him to dream  _him_ up, he’d no idea. Sherlock Bloody Holmes. He was a maniac, completely insane. Didn’t know a thing about anything, but knew everything about nothing John knew about. And he could  _see_ things, somehow. For a moment, John recalled his voice in his head.  _“It’s not like you have anything to go back to.”_ How did  _he_ know? How did he know a  _thing_ about John? He’d nearly sprained his goddamned ankle, because he’d never seen one before! So how the bloody hell had he known all John had to come home to was a drunken sister and an illegal handgun?

The radio clicked on. An pop song from a few years ago was playing. He knew it, but couldn’t place it. The tune was familiar. He was grateful. It grounded him, brought him back. He closed his eyes and sighed, feeling the weight of the day settle over him like a blanket. Not a nice one. One that muffled his senses and wore him down. With a sigh, he opened his eyes and kicked off the sheet, sitting up on the edge of the bed as he rubbed his hands down his face. He imagined digging his fingernails in, ripping the last five years off his face. God, he’d been so young. His shoulder twinged, as though to bring him back to the present.

With another sigh, he stood and got dressed then went downstairs, covering a yawn with the back of his hand. The quiet sound of the song followed him, not loud enough to wake Harry, on the couch. Nothing could wake Harry. She was out cold. John looked at her sadly for a moment before turning to the kitchen, filling the kettle to the top and placing it on the hob to boil. As it did so, he pulled the teapot down from the cupboard above the stove and two thermoses from the shelf at the bottom of the pantry, taking the tea leaves, coffee and sugar with him.

He leaned against the counter as he waited for the kettle to boil, trying to keep his weight off his leg, knowing he would be straining it impossibly on the walk to the jetty. He tried to repeat the words of his psychiatrists in his mind, telling himself it was all in his head, that the pain wasn’t really there. But as he shifted his weight, testing it, pain shot like fire up his leg, leaving him gasping and clutching the edge of the bench with a white-knuckled grip. The kettle clicked off. The song changed. John breathed and turned around to pour the water into the tea pot and the thermos with the coffee. As the tea seeped, he wondered if Sherlock would want milk and sugar.

Eventually, he decided to put some sugar in a zip-lock bag with a spoon and a little milk in a water bottle he found in the cup drawer. The tea finished, he spun the pot three times clockwise before pouring it. He thought of his mother, which made him smile sadly. It was around quarter past five. He thought about going upstairs to turn off the radio, but it wasn’t hurting anyone, so left it. He put the bottles and sugar in one of the plastic shopping bags stored under the sink and limped out of the house, closing the door quietly behind him. Harry was still asleep.

The trip down to the jetty was both better and worse than he’d thought. Better, because the crisp morning air helped clear his head, brushing away any nightmares he’d had. Worse, because the crisp morning air went straight to his leg and shoulder, making the journey all the more painful. He was glad the walk wasn’t very long, only a kilometre or so. Still, by the time he reached the dirt path leading to the beach, he was gritting his teeth and gasping with each step, limping heavily. When he saw his cane, leaning against the wooden fence at the end of the path, he almost cried in relief.

But then there was the problem of holding the shopping bag with his left hand so his right could hold the cane. Trading one pain for another, it seemed. Still, it was only fifty metres to the end of the jetty. He could make it. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the sky was streaked with pink and orange and painting the cirrus clouds golden on one side. There was no wind, the water almost perfectly flat. The only sound was the gentle lapping of waves and the sound of John’s uneven steps on the wood of the jetty. Finally, he reached the end, where he painfully lowered himself to sit, hanging his legs over the edge after taking his shoes off, letting his toes gently break the surface.

He was early. It was only quarter to six. He pulled out the thermos filled with tea and unscrewed the lid, using it as a cup to pour the tea into.

“You’re early,” came a low baritone by his feet.

John looked down and saw Sherlock’s head poking out of the water, his black hair plastered to his face. “So are you,” he said with a small smile. He hadn’t heard him approach.

“Did you bring the coffee and tea?” he asked as he swam closer, almost-black scales flashing under the water.

John nodded and gestured with the thermos in his hand. “Do you want to come up here, or are you fine down there?” he asked.

“I’ll come up.” John placed the tea and his makeshift mug to the side and reached out his right arm. Sherlock grabbed it and clumsily hoisted himself out of the water and onto the jetty, tail making a bit of a commotion as he flicked it about, trying to get some leverage. Finally, he was lying on the jetty on his stomach, so it was a simple matter to roll over and sit up.

Once he was sitting next to John, his tail fin trailing in the water, he looked at him. “Tea and coffee?” he prompted.

John smiled and handed him the lid he’d been about to use as a mug. “This is tea. Be careful – it’s hot. You might burn your tongue.”

Sherlock took the cup and smelled it suspiciously before sticking his tongue in it. He jerked away immediately and John laughed as he muttered, “Ouch!” with his tongue still between his teeth.

“I told you it was hot,” John chuckled. “I didn’t bring any cool water, but you might like it better with milk, anyway,” he said and took the cup to pour in a bit of the milk he’d brought. “Try that,” he said, offering it back to Sherlock, who approached with more caution this time.

“You put  _milk_ in this?” he asked, a little confused. “As in… from mothers?”

John laughed a little again and shook his head. “Not really. It’s from cows, which are… they’re a type of animal, like a horse.”

“Big with four legs,” Sherlock nodded, remembering.

“That’s the one,” John said. “Except cows aren’t as nice as horses. They’re farmed for their meat and milk.”

“We have farms,” Sherlock said as he brought the cup to his lips and taking a hesitant sip. He seemed to like it, and took another. “We grow seaweed, seagrass and algae. Sometimes, if the group is large enough, say over twenty, some will be delegated to herding the fish.”

John nodded, uncapping the coffee and pouring some into the lid, leaving room for milk. He also added some sugar, stirring it together and blowing over it before taking a sip. Sherlock watched and copied him, breathing gently over his cup of tea and disrupting the steam trail. “This is the coffee,” John said after taking a sip. “It’s a little bitter, so we add sugar, to make it sweet.”

Sherlock handed John the tea and took the coffee from him, smelling it before drinking, as he had with the tea. He thought it over for a moment, taking another sip, before declaring, “It would be better without milk.”

“Well, I’ll finish that one, you can have the tea, and when we’re done, I’ll pour you another without milk,” John said as he handed the tea back to him, taking the proffered coffee.

They sat in silence for a while, drinking slowly as they watched the sky change. Sherlock broke it by asking, “Do you run?”

John looked at him, surprised, but his eyes were locked on Brownsea Island. “I’m sorry?” he asked.

“Yesterday, you said running was like walking but faster. Do you run?” Sherlock took a sip of tea, eyes not shifting.

“I… No, I don’t,” John said, looking sadly at the cane lying between them. “I can’t,” he clarified.

“You want to.” It wasn’t a question.

John answered it anyway. “Yes.” The silence returned and Sherlock placed his empty cup between them, looking up at the sky as he leaned back on his hands. His tail swished a little in the water, the only sound apart from the gentle breaking of the waves on the sand. When John finished his coffee, he poured the remainder into Sherlock’s cup, adding two spoons of sugar. He filled his own with tea and milk, not bothering with sweetening it. He was the one to break the silence next as he placed the black coffee next to Sherlock. “Do you see the sunrise often?”

“No,” came the quiet reply. “I’ve rarely come above the surface, before this. I’ve only seen it from below.” John realised his friend was smiling as he looked up at the sky, the vibrant colours fading into the pale blue of morning. “It’s quite beautiful.”

John smiled at him and brought his cup to his lips, savouring the taste of the tea. “I agree,” he murmured, watching as the sun finally peeked over the horizon.

They sat in silence until the last drop was drunk and Poole could be head waking up behind them, then sat for a few minutes more, neither willing to face the passage of time. Finally, John shifted and looked at Sherlock’s tail, seeing the places where the scales had been torn out were packed with what looked like algae. “How is it?” he asked, nodding to the injuries.

Sherlock looked down at them and sighed. “Painful. But better. The algae will act as a slime coat until the scales grow back.” Seeing John’s confused look, he rolled his eyes and explained, “It will stop the injuries from getting infected by bacteria.” He leaned back against the worn wood of the jetty and muttered, “Honestly, it’s as though you know nothing of marine life.”

“I don’t know a thing about fish,” John said with a smile. “I was a doctor. I didn’t often get a patient complaining about seaweed between the scales.”

Sherlock snorted. “Only idiots manage to get seaweed stuck in their scales,” he said, and for some reason, it made John laugh harder than he had in what felt like years. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, amused, before closing his eyes, laying his head back on his hands, simply listening to the sound of unrestrained happiness.

“You…” John gasped, wiping at his eyes.

“Me?” Sherlock asked, not bothering to open his eyes.

“You’re  _impossible,”_ John chuckled, calming down.

“And yet, here I am,” Sherlock said softly, looking up at the early-morning sky.

“You know, I’m still not convinced you are,” John said, leaning back to join him, still chuckling every now and then.

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked, reaching a hand up and splaying his fingers, as though to catch the clouds that float by.

“I’m not quite convinced I haven’t gone mad,” John said, turning his head to look at his strange, almost alien face.

“You couldn’t have imagined me,” Sherlock said. And John believed him.

Not long afterwards, Sherlock had slipped back into the bay and John had packed up the tea and coffee, picked up his cane and stood up stiffly. He looked over the bay, which was just beginning to fill with boats, and turned back, beginning his uneven walk back to the house. Perhaps Harry was awake. He doubted it. It was only quarter to seven.

He was back in the kitchen reading through the classifieds when she woke up, looking for job offers. He could hear her muffled groan, no doubt caused by having her brain drilled into by the alcohol from last night, then she went upstairs to have a shower. When she came downstairs, he had a cup of coffee waiting for her on the bench. Looking haggard and little better for the shower, she immediately sat down and stared at the coffee, as though wondering if she could stomach it, but decided to go for it anyway, taking a large mouthful and sighing in appreciation when she set it back down on the bench.

“What’s got you so awake?” she asked, supporting her head on a hand and looking at John, sitting calmly beside her.

“I’m always awake in the morning, H,” he murmured as he turned the page, careful of her headache.

“Yeah, but you’re… I don’t know.  _Awake_ awake. Not normal awake, like you usually are. You’re usually dead awake,” she said, bringing the mug back to her lips, but pulling it away to stare at it before she took a sip. “And you made me coffee.”

“You needed coffee,” he said distractedly, looking at an ad for the local medical clinic, reading through it carefully and taking down the name of the place, address and their phone number on the notepad by his elbow.

“Are you looking for jobs?” Harry asked through a yawn as she ran her fingers through her short, blond hair.

“Mmm…” John hummed the affirmative as he looked carefully over the page for any more jobs of interest.

“Onya, J,” she said, giving him a tired punch in the arm, taking a second to drain the last of her coffee. “What time is it?” she asked as she stood to put the mug in the sink.

“Around eight,” John said, folding the newspaper and putting it to the side.

“Mmm… are you going swimming again?”

“No, I’m going to look for a job.”

“But after that, are you going swimming again?”

John sighed and smiled at her fondly. “Depends.”

“On if there’s a pretty lady?” she asked suggestively with a grin.

“On if I  _feel_ like it,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Go get ready for work, H.”

“You’re not my real mum,” Harry muttered as she walked past him, on her way upstairs, giving him a playful slap over the head.

“I should hope not.”

Harry really wasn’t so bad when she was sober. It’s only that most of the time, she wasn’t. And that was where the arguments came from. And the fights. And the passing out. And the throwing up. And the passive aggressive mood swings.

John stood up and went into Harry’s study, through a door in the lounge room, to print off his résumé a number of times, though he hoped he’d only need the first, which he would use to apply for a job at the clinic. It was near the Poole town centre, a bit of a way from Salter road, where Harry’s house was, but it wouldn’t bother him.

He caught a bus into town at nine thirty and walked to the Poole Medical Centre, which turned out to be an old, brick building, two storeys tall. When he entered, a bell over the door chimed, announcing his arrival. He glanced around, seeing a few patients sitting in the waiting room and a lady typing quickly at the desk. As he approached, his cane horribly obvious against the tile floor, she looked up with a kind, hello-there-patient smile that looked a little strained.

“Good morning, Sir,” she greeted him readily, reaching for the mouse of her computer. “Do you have an appointment today?”

John shifted, horribly aware of his pain-filled shoulder and cane, the way he rested his weight on his left foot so as not to aggravate the phantom pain in is right.  _‘It’s all in your head, Watson. It’s not there.’_ “Ah, no, I’m actually here to apply for a job,” he said, flashing her an almost-embarrassed grin which had somehow gotten him his first girlfriend, and a few more since then.

“Oh…” she said, looking taken aback for a moment, not being able to control her glance to John’s leg before her eyes met his face again. “Sorry, yes, of course. What was your name, Sir?” Her blush let him know she knew he knew she’d stolen the critical glance at his leg and had regretted it immediately, and it was endearing, but he still felt as though something were stuck in his throat. Shame, maybe.

He cleared his throat, trying to dislodge it, and said, “Watson. John H. Watson.” He handed her his curriculum vitae, keeping his smile on his face to let her know he didn’t blame her for her scepticism.

He watched her eyes widen a little as she looked over it and felt his hand tremble, remembering just how he’d learned how to identify and treat an acute asthma attack at a moment’s notice. It hadn’t been by reading a book about it. He clenched his fist, trying to hide the tremor, but not knowing how much success he had. “Well…” She looked up at him, as if to gauge if he was joking, and smiled a little. She had a nice smile. “You’re certainly qualified enough. Wouldn’t mind if we just tossed you out in a war zone, would you?”

She chuckled a little and John smiled stiffly. “Yes, well. I think I’ve had quite enough of that.” He gave a bit of a laugh, but had to clear his throat again. “So…”

She shrugged with a wide smile. “So, when do you want to begin?”

John laughed properly this time, a little breathlessly. “Really? You’ll take me on?” he asked, suddenly hopeful that he  _wouldn’t_ have to use the rest of his résumé printouts.

“Of course. We’ve been overworked for a few weeks now, so the sooner you start, the better.” She gave him another one of her pretty smiles and held out her hand. “Welcome aboard, Dr Watson,” she said. She really did have a very nice smile.

 

“John, where the  _hell_ have you been?”

“I’m sorry?” John pulled up short, wiping the water from his eyes as he turned around, treading water.

“I called for you  _hours_ ago!” Sherlock exclaimed. The strangest part was, he actually looked  _angry._

“What are you talking about? You know I was in town, right? I couldn’t possibly have heard you. I don’t just spend my time hiding on the other side of the bushes, waiting for you to get lonely.”

Sherlock’s glare obviously showed that he believed he  _should,_ even if he didn’t.

“What’s this all about? I was in the middle of swimming.”

 _“Swimming,”_ Sherlock scoffed. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“You’re half fish! You can’t judge me by your standards,” John exclaimed, slapping water at him.

“I can, and I will. I’ll judge you by any standards I wish.”

“Alright, but what do you  _want?”_

“Something to  _do!”_ Sherlock exclaimed, his tail flicking an impressive amount of water at John, who threw an arm up to cover his eyes.

“Why don’t you try swimming, since you’re so bloody good at it?”

“I  _did!_ I’ve swum around this boredom trap twice already! Everything’s starting to look the same. I can’t  _stand_ it!” He flopped onto his back and shouted, “The ennui is  _eating_ me, John!”

John glanced around to see if anyone had heard his shouts and slapped his tail. “Shut  _up,_ you idiot. I’ve been gone less than ten hours! How could you be bored, already?”

“There’s nothing to  _do!”_

“Can’t you, I don’t know, go around, meet the aquatic life? Find some friends?”

“I don’t  _have_ friends,” Sherlock spat, glaring at him.

“Then why are you here, complaining to me about it?”

“I thought I had one, once, but it turned out he thought it was much better fun to go off chasing women than occupy me,” Sherlock said, glaring at him accusatorially.

“I’m pretty sure anyone in the world would think that.”

“Good god, are you trying to outsmart me?”

“I’m trying to out _reason_ you. And succeeding, evidently.”

“That doesn’t stop me being  _bored.”_

“And what do you want  _me_ to do about it?” John exclaimed, throwing up his right arm and letting it slap down on the water loudly.

“Occupy me!”

“What did you do for fun, before your devil of a brother ditched you here, for  _me_ to deal with?”

“I irritated people!”

“Well, you’re doing a damn fine job of it right now, I can tell you that much!” John turned around and continued swimming one-armed breaststroke. Sherlock had been right yesterday when he said it would be almost impossible to move his arm after swimming to Brownsea and halfway back, hauling someone back to land from five hundred metres out, then having them punch it and dig their fingers into it.

“Don’t you swim away from me, young man!” Sherlock said as he swam to be in front of John once more.

“I’m older than you,” John groaned as he turned around again, trying to get away from the insufferable man-fish. It didn’t seem to be working, as Sherlock appeared before him once more.

“How do you figure that?”

“I’m thirty-three. You don’t look a day older than twenty-seven,” he said as he tried to swim around him, but Sherlock was drifting along in front of him, urging him out to sea.

“Thirty-three and twenty-seven whats?” Sherlock asked, confused.

“Years! Now, let me get through!”

“Um, no,” Sherlock said, not even pretending to consider it. “What’s a year?”

John stopped swimming and slapped his hand down on the water in frustration. “A year! A bloody  _year!_ It’s how long the earth takes to go around the sun! That’s three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days now can I  _please get through?”_

But Sherlock just looked more confused and didn’t budge, instead asking, “What do you mean, go  _around_ the sun?”

John was shocked out of his anger, looking at Sherlock in surprise before throwing his head back and laughing. “You didn’t know the earth goes around the sun?”

“How can it go  _around_ the sun? We’re not exactly moving! And it’s tiny anyway,  _look_ at it!”

“Wow, okay,” John said with a laugh. “Well, there’s this thing called the universe and it’s filled with everything in the universe. From Earth, a tiny planet in a tiny solar system in a tiny corner of the universe, stars look like tiny pinpricks of light, but the sun itself is a star, just a lot closer to Earth than the others, but still really far away. Stars are basically massive balls of burning gas with enough gravity to pull things called planets into orbit around them.”

“That’s stupid. No-one’s going to believe that. Humans come up with such illogical ideas.”

“We’ve got  _proof_ that this is what happens.”

“Yes, you also had ‘proof’ that Atlantis existed. Do you know how many had to evacuate when you decided to start scanning to bottom of the ocean for a city that never happened?”

“Does it really bother you?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Then why are you complaining?” John asked with a chuckle.

“I was trying to appeal to your compassionate nature,” Sherlock said with a small smile.

“Oh?” John asked. “You know I was a soldier. What makes you think I have a compassionate nature?”

“You tried to save me,” Sherlock said plainly with a shrug.

“Yeah, well,” John said with a short chuckle, “if I’d known you’d be harassing me every time I came down for a swim, maybe I would have left you there, to be run over by a boat or something.”

“If…” Sherlock looked down at his webbed fingers, splayed just below the surface. “If you don’t want me to annoy you, I won’t,” he said, looking up and shrugging, trying to be offhand. “I’m only staying here until my scales grow back, because I know there’s enough of the algae I need here to patch them until they do.”

John watched his face for a moment and realised what he was saying.  _I’m leaving soon anyway, so it’s not like it would be a difficult thing, to stay away._ John answered slowly, considering his words. “Despite my desire to be alone, and despite your ability to find just what to say, to piss me off… you also know just what to say to make it all go away for a while. I’m sure you know, but I haven’t been doing an awful lot of laughing, lately. So I don’t mind if you stay.” He took a deep breath and said, “A lot of the time, I want to be alone. But alone only seems to make everything worse. So really, when I say I want to be alone, I just mean I want someone to talk to.”

“But you don’t have anyone to talk to, so you claim you wish to be left alone,” Sherlock concluded for him.

John gave him a hesitant grin and a shrug. “I was hoping you could change that.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically and fell backwards into the water, arms outspread. “If you  _insist,”_ he sighed, giving his tail a lazy flick, the pelvic fins flexing a little in the air.

“I do have a question, though,” John said as he reached out to touch the membrane of Sherlock’s caudal fin. “If you can barely handle nine hours, how are you going to survive a few weeks?” The membrane was smooth, almost silky under John’s fingers and he brushed his hand over one of the spines which gave it structure. “Also, these won’t poison me, will they?” he asked, pulling his hand away momentarily and looking at Sherlock for affirmation.

His eyes were closed as he lay back, buoyed by the salt water. John wondered if he hadn’t heard, his ears underwater, but a moment later he lazily said, “Only the spines on my back contain venom,” only answering one of John’s questions.

With a shrug, he replaced his hand, wondering if there were many nerves in his fins, and if that made him as ticklish as John had felt, when he’d been playing with Johns toes. With the way his tail seemed to jerk ever so slightly every now and then, John would assume so, but that could have just been something akin to John tapping his foot or clicking his fingers absentmindedly. He measured one of the spines against his arm and found it reached from his outstretched fingers to a little past his elbow. When his trailed his fingers into the groove where the membrane of the fin met the muscle of the tail itself, it quickly jerked down into the water, further than John could reach, and Sherlock made quite an interesting sound – something between a grunt and a shriek as he brought himself bolt upright in the water, splashing around a little as he looked at John with wide eyes.

And John, laughing, managed to gasp out, “Are you… _ticklish?”_

Sherlock’s rolled eyes and muttered, “That’s a stupid question,” was only answered by more laughter.

“Oh, god, you _are!”_ John exclaimed, throwing his head back and slapping the water with his hand. “I thought… but I wasn’t sure… but you _are!”_

“Stop laughing!” Sherlock exclaimed, making as though to flick water over John with his tail, but thought better of it, keeping it well below the surface and out of John’s reach. “You’re insufferable,” he muttered, glaring at a man driving his boat by fifty metres away so he wouldn’t have to meet John’s overly-amused face.

“And you’re ticklish,” John countered, still laughing.

“Stop giggling; it wasn’t  _that_ funny,” Sherlock snapped, turning his glare to John.

“But the  _sound_ you made!” John tried to recreate it, but couldn’t stop laughing long enough to do so accurately, so simply continued, “And your face was so surprised!”

“Your feet were hardly any better, but I didn’t make a fuss about it,” Sherlock said, crossing his arms over his chest, the raised spines along his back showing his dissatisfaction.

“Yeah, but I didn’t squeal like a prepubescent girl.”

“You can’t insult me with insults I don’t understand!” Sherlock exclaimed, thoroughly put out by the unfairness of it all.

“You can’t be that ticklish and expect to get away with it.”

Sherlock made a sound of frustration and dove below the surface in a huff. John could see him swimming back and forth a few metres below him, sulking, and chuckled a little more, shaking his head and closing his eyes with a smile, letting his body float to the surface as Sherlock had, a minute before. He relaxed, knowing he would be back before long with a question about one thing or another. If there was one thing he knew about the strange man, it was that his curiosity was insatiable.

Tranquil as he was, he wasn’t entirely prepared for the cool, webbed hands to grab him by the ankles and drag him under the surface, so his only reflex was to grab a quick breath as he kicked, trying to struggle out of the hold. When he was two metres below the surface, Sherlock took to his feet, brushing over the arches with feather-light touches, making him squirm harder as he struggled not to inhale water through his nose, a few bubbles escaping his pursed lips as he kicked and twisted, fighting to escape. Sherlock’s rich laughter filled the water around them and he’d have wondered what allowed his voice to do so, had he the breath, brain power or will to do so at that time. As it was, he just strove to kick the smug grin off his face as hard as possible.

He almost managed to get a leg free, but then Sherlock seemed to decide not getting kicked in the face was more important than drown-tickling John and so wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, stopping any hope for escape as he rose to let John break the surface, darting away quickly to let him tread water for himself, ducking away before John could land a kick. When he broke the surface a second later, a safe three metres away, he was still laughing.

“I’m going to  _murder_ you!” John exclaimed as he lunged forwards, trying to catch hold of Sherlock, but he darted away before John could reach him.

“You can have me if you catch me,” Sherlock taunted with a grin, the sing-song way he said it making John wonder if it was part of a game he’d played as a child, racing other mer-children around on the bottom of the ocean.

The thought didn’t make him not want to strangle the man, especially considering it wouldn’t do him any proper harm. But whenever he thought he was in reach, the slippery bastard would dart away, laughing like a maniac as he taunted him.

“Really, John, you expect to catch me like  _that?_  It’s a wonder you even managed to  _get_ to the island, yesterday. I could swim faster than you the day after I hatched!”

That pulled John up sort and he squinted at Sherlock. “You  _hatched?”_ he asked, incredulous.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and confirmed, “Yes, I hatched. I understand sharks and dolphins give birth to live young, but it would just be a hindrance for us.”

“How many eggs?” John asked, shocked, thinking of caviar.

“One, usually. Sometimes two. Very rarely are there more. Gestation takes about forty weeks.” He frowned, a little irritated. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, I just… I think I’m experiencing culture shock,” John said a little blankly as he looked over the friend he’d been trying to strangle a moment ago, as though trying to imagine him squished into a tiny fish egg. “How big are they?” he asked.

Sherlock shrugged and gave an approximation with his hands, roughly forty centimetres apart. “I never looked closely into it, but it is apparent the eggs grow with the child inside them. They’re only about this big when the mothers lay,” he said, showing a gap ten centimetres wide.

“Alright, so…” John shrugged, “that’s pretty much exactly the same as a human. But with a mobile uterus. Actually, I’m beginning to see the charm.”

“What’s a uterus?”

“It’s like… the sack the foetus grows in, in the mother. Around here,” he said, gesturing to his lower abdomen.

“Do you have a uterus?” Sherlock asked, drifting closer with curiosity clear on his face.

“No, you idiot,” John said, flicking water at him with a laugh. “I’m a  _man!”_

“The male seahorse bears the children,” Sherlock reminded him with a shrug.

“Yeah, well, I’m not a seahorse.”

“That’s quite possibly the most intelligent thing you’ve said to me all day.” He ducked away with a chuckle as John swiped at him, diving under the waves again and swimming off in a flash of black-purple scales.

John shook his head fondly as he turned to go back to shore, surprised when he saw how far out they’d drifted, though it wasn’t nearly as far as he’d had to swim the previous day. He began to cut out a leisurely pace, not in any rush but knowing he would have to go home sometime.

He was even more surprised to find Sherlock waiting for him at the jetty when he got back, but brushed it off with a grin, ignoring his muttered, “Well, you certainly took your time.”

“I thought you went off to look for more algae or something.”

“No, I’m good for another twelve hours. But you gave me enough time to change the dressing three times over and still beat you here. I ran into someone else on my way over here, actually. I thought he was you, but it turned out it wasn’t. I don’t think he got a good look at me, though, so there’s that.”

John hesitated for a moment before asking, “Would you mind if I had a look at the cuts? I could re-dress them for you, if you want, but I’d just like to have a look.”

Sherlock gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t see why not. So long as you’re not prodding anything which oughtn’t to be prodded, I don’t have a problem. “

“So… tomorrow, then?” he offered with a grin. “I’ll bring you some jam on toast for brekkie.”

“I certainly hope you don’t expect me to repay all these favours you’re doing me,” Sherlock said with narrowed eyes.

John laughed and said, “They’re not  _favours,_ you dolt. I don’t expect anything in return. I just don’t think it’s right for someone, part fish or otherwise, to go through life never knowing the taste of coffee, tea and jam on toast.”

“Speaking of…” Sherlock trailed off with a smirk and John rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll bring some more. Don’t worry about it.”

John turned to make his way to the beach and had gone a few metres when Sherlock called his name.

“Yeah, what?” he asked, turning back.

“Even if he  _were_ underwater,” he said with a grin, “no man with a limp would have been able to nearly kick me in the face. Just some food for thought,” he said, dropping a wink before sinking below the waves, caudal fin flicking out of the water as he left, in what could be taken as an offhand wave.

 _‘Offhand, indeed,’_  John thought with a chuckle, shaking his head at his terrible wit. When he reached the dry sand, he made for his towel and cane, where he left them by the trail. As he walked, there was only the slightest twinge in his leg, one easily ignored. After drying himself off, John pulled on his shirt and picked them up.

He regarded the adjustable stainless steel stick and the already-worn rubber grip. Food for thought. With a small smile, he began walking down the path, the cane clasped in his hand and his weight on his leg, which barely uttered a protest.


End file.
